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Robert Caron, according to Atomic Heritage (opens in new tab). "The mushroom itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside," said the Enola Gay's tail gunner, Staff Sgt. The enormous blast instantly destroyed most of the city and claimed some 140,000 lives, according to the BBC (opens in new tab). The bomb exploded about 1,900 feet (580 meters) over the unsuspecting city. Inside the Enola Gay's bomb bay was "Little Boy."Īt 8:15 a.m., the Enola Gay's bay doors opened and "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima. 6, a B-29 airplane named Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, according to Time magazine (opens in new tab)) took off from Tinian, an island roughly six hours from Hiroshima by air. Situated on a coastal plain, the city was an important manufacturing and military center - at least 40,000 military personnel were stationed in Hiroshima during the summer of 1945.įor these and other reasons, the city was selected as the first target of an atomic bomb attack. In 1945, Hiroshima, Japan, was a city of about 255,000 people that was largely untouched by the war, according to a paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology (opens in new tab). The damage caused by the Hiroshima bombing (Image credit: Getty/ Bettmann / Contributor) Army's Manhattan District, the name Manhattan Project eventually stuck, though work was carried out in Los Alamos, New Mexico Oak Ridge, Tennessee Hanford, Washington Chalk River, Ontario, and several other sites, according to The Bradbury Science Museum (opens in new tab).Īfter several years of intensive research under strict secrecy, the Manhattan Project developed two different bombs that used two different nuclear materials: uranium-235 and plutonium-239, according to the US Department of Energy (opens in new tab). One scientist denied clearance to work on the project was Albert Einstein, according to The American Museum of Natural History (opens in new tab).īecause one early component of the project was based in the U.S. Within a matter of months, a coalition of American, British and European scientists - many of whom were refugees from Germany, Italy and other fascist nations - began collaborating on a vast international project to develop a uranium-based bomb before any Axis powers beat them to it.